“The Living Building Challenge™ is the built environment’s most rigorous performance standard. It can be applied to development at all scales, from buildings – both new construction and renovation – to infrastructure, landscapes and neighborhoods.” And all across the country, building professionals are taking the challenge and enjoying extraordinary results.
Built in 1948, Willowbrook House is located in a well-established neighborhood and aligned with the overall character of the area. Owner/Architect Sunshine Mathon wanted to remodel the home, build an addition, retain the existing character, embed a sense of personal craft and “reduce the impact of his family’s lifestyle on the land, and the community in which they live. Though Mathon had a tacit goal to achieve net zero energy with the house, he honestly did not expect to achieve it.”
In Pittsburgh – Center for Sustainable Landscapes
The mission of the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Garden – to inspire and educate all with the beauty and importance of plants; advance sustainability and human and environmental wellbeing through action and research – “is evident in the Center for Sustainable Landscapes (CSL). A restored brownfield is now a productive place that takes what it needs from what is available to it, and provides a healthy environment for life to thrive. Over the course of 2013, CSL demonstrated that it operates as net zero energy facility. Moving forward, the operations team continues to engage occupants into how the facility maintains a net zero energy status.”
“Backed by its mission to protect the Pacific Northwest’s natural environment and promote healthy and sustainable ecosystems, the Bullitt Foundation wanted their new headquarters –The Bullitt Center – to be built to the highest level of sustainability. They also wanted the building to be a demonstration project that would set a new standard for developers, architects, engineers and contractors.”
The six-story commercial office building, in the Central Area of Seattle, is home to a variety of “tenants who are successfully operating their businesses, while working in a net-positive energy environment. The Bullitt Center aims to advance the awareness and adoption of high-performance building through ongoing educational efforts, and by demonstrating that performance-based design works in a market-rate commercial project.”
The Living Building Challenge™, an international sustainable building certification program, is described
“as a philosophy, advocacy tool and certification program that promotes the most advanced measurement of sustainability in the built environment.” Learn more at https://living-future.org/lbc.
